The way I hear it they were required to make the critical upgrades and forbidden from charging high enough rates to pay for it. If this is true, then the people

The way I hear it they were required to make the critical upgrades and forbidden from charging high enough rates to pay for it. If this is true, then the people imposing those two constraints have only themselves to blame for the blackouts. Bullshit. PG&E redirected around $100 million from their safety budget and spent it on corporate bonuses instead. While hopefully not part of their safety budget, PG&E spends about $400 million annually on stock buybacks. PG&E has plenty of money to prevent this bullshit but is more concerned with executive compensation. I mean, for fucks sake, Caltrans had to threaten to shut down the Hwy 1 and Hwy 24 tunnels before PG&E thought about bringing in generators (not even leaving enough time to install them before the power was cut). Regulatory capture is a thing that happens and is a problem, but this seems to be a case of bad regulation, not regulatory capture. Who lobbied for the regulations? Hint: PG&E.